Dow Chemical Reviews

Pros

World-class company
Excellent caliber of people
Well managed

Cons

As with any large organization, organizational change can be disruptive to the career track and aspirations when the occur.

Pros

- Flexible work schedule, they allow you to take off when you need to mostly
- Every other friday off work schedule
- Great benefits
- Large Company, so lots of potential opportunities to move around

Cons

- Management doesn't seem to make good decisions all the time
- Promotions are based on who you know, not performance
- If not identified as top performer early in career, could hurt career opportunities
- Leadership is questionable at best
- Performance review process

Advice to Senior Management

Leaders should be promoted based on quality of work and past performance, and when they are promoted, they should be reviewed the same way their direct reports are, but there is no way to provide feedback on our leaders.

Pros

Opportunities For growth, if they'll let you leave the BPSC.

Cons

Pay and benefits are horrendous within the BPSC. They have a high turnover rate for a reason. Everywhere else is Dow is better than the BPSC

Advice to Senior Management

Get rid of the BPSC. Paying 4 employees peanuts to do a job that one person use to do will not work in the long run

Pros

Great, smart people. Cooperative spirit. Great leadership development and training.

Cons

Have to work harder to make up for top management mistakes. Troops save the day for poor decisions by the Generals.

Advice to Senior Management

Lose the egos.

Pros

If work life balance is important, account management at Dow is an excellent carerre choice.

Cons

Be prepared to work odd hours, but with that comes flexibility.

Pros

Plenty of opportunities for international growth

Cons

Experienced hires often get short changed

Pros

Compensation, HR processes, training, opportunities, very smart people, information technology, global approach.

Cons

- Midland Michigan is a boring small company town where you can't t buy a bag of carrots without 10 people asking you what you're cooking.

- Extremely inwardly focused. Very bureaucratic. No idea what goes on in the "real world". People don't understand their own businesses but know Dow like the back of their hand.

- No idea how to develop and commercialize new technology. Very focused on high NPV concepts, scared to death of getting hands dirty delivering products (note - I am a Sr. Director R&D leaving company for personal reasons).

- No accountability. Lots of chiefs, few indians. Many people able to say "no", no one can say yes.

- Functional reporting (e.g., supply supports into supply chain function, R&D reports into R&D function) allows each function to independently create their own goals (and exceed these) while businesses go down the toilet. I couldn't believe some of the things I heard from functional leaders when reviewing disappointing business results.

- Revolving door business leadership teams create constant business disruptions.

Advice to Senior Management

Fire yourself. You've not created any long term shareholder value during your tenure. The dividend is lower now and the share price has not recovered from the poor deal you struck to buy R&H. BTW, you have good people but the functional alignment structure you've created is killing their ability to execute against a well defined business strategy.

Pros

Decent pay. Get lots of exposure t.

Cons

Stigmatism of being in customer service for career advancement.

Pros

money, benefits, fringe benefits, community involvement

Cons

shift work, stress, teamwork needed

Advice to Senior Management

make a renewed commitment to the personnel on a lower level

Pros

Size and scope of operations - interesting work
Global opportunities

Cons

Pretty bureaucratic
Top management an insider club

Advice to Senior Management

Decide on a strategy and stick to it